Relationships

Now your inquiry has to do with individual human relationship of the romantic sort, and I understand that. So let me address myself specifically, and at length, to human love relationships - these things which continue to give you such trouble!

When human love relationships fail (relationships never truly fail, except in the strictly human sense that they did not produce what you want), they fail because they were entered into for the wrong reason. ("Wrong", of course, is a relative term, meaning something measured against that which is "right" - whatever that is! It would be more accurate in your language to say "relationships fail - change - most often when they are entered into for reason not wholly beneficial or conducive to their survival.")

Most people enter into relationships with an eye toward what they can get out of them, rather than what they can put into them.

The purpose of a relationship is to decide what part of yourself you'd like to see "show up", not what part of another you can capture and hold.

There can be only one purpose for relationships - and for all of life: to be and to decide Who You Really Are. It is very romantic to say that you were "nothing" until that special other came along, but it is that not true. Worse, it puts an incredible pressure on the other to be all sorts of things he or she is not.

Not wanting to "let you down", they try very hard to be and do these things until they cannot anymore. They can no longer complete your picture of them. They can no longer fill the roles to which they have been assigned. Resentment builds. Anger follows. It is very romantic to say that now that special other has entered your life, you feel complete. Yet the purpose of relationship is not to have another who might complete you; but to have another with whom you might share your completeness.

Here is the paradox of all human relationships: You have no need for a particular OTHER in order for you to experience, fully Who You Are, and... without another, you are nothing.

The problem is so basic, so simple, and yet so tragically misunderstood. Your grandest dream, your highest idea, and your fondest hope has had to do with your beloved other rather than your beloved self. The test of your relationship has had to do with how well the other lived up to your ideas, and how well you saw yourself living up to his or hers. Yet the only true test has to do with how well you live up to yours. Relationships are SACRED because they provide life grandest opportunity - indeed, its only opportunity - to create and produce the experience of your highest conceptualization of self. Relationships fail when you see them as life's grandest opportunity to create and produce the experience of your highest conceptualization of another. Let each person in relationship worry about self - what self is being, doing, and having; what self is wanting, asking, giving; what self is seeking, creating, experiencing, and all relationship would magnificently serve their purpose - and their participants! Let each person in relationship worry not about the other, but only, only, only, about self. This seems a strange teaching, for you have been told that in the highest form of relationship, one worries only about the other. Yet I tell this: your focus upon other - your obsession with the other - is what causes relationship to fail. What is the other being? What is the other doing? What is the other having? What is the other saying? Wanting? Demanding? What is the other thinking? Expecting? Planning? The Master understands that it doesn't matter what the other is being, doing, having, saying, wanting, demanding. It doesn't matter what the other is thinking, expecting, planning. It only matters what you are being in relationship to that. The most loving person is the person who is self-centered. Radical teaching... not if you look at it carefully. If you cannot love yourself, you cannot love another. Many people make the mistake of seeking love of self THROUGH love for another. Of course, they don't realize they are doing this. It is not a conscious effort. It's what's going on in the mind. Deep in the mind - subconscious. They think: "If I can just love others, they will love me. Then I will be lovable, and I can love me." The reverse of this is that so many people hate themselves because they feel there is not another who loves them. This is a sickness - it's when people are truly "lovesick" because the truth is other people do love them. They don't believe you. They think you are trying to manipulate them - trying to get something. (How could you love them for who they truly are? No. There must be some mistake. You must want something. Now what do you want?) They now embark on a campaign to make you prove it. You have to prove that you love them. To do this, they may ask you to start altering your behavior. Second, if they finally come to a place where they can believe you love them, they begin at once to worry about how long they can keep your love. So in order to hold onto your love they start altering their behavior. Thus, two people literally lose themselves in a relationship. They get into the relationship hoping to find themselves, and they lose themselves instead. This losing of the self in a relationship is what causes most of the bitterness in such couplings. Two people join together in a partnership hoping that the whole will be greater than the sum of the parts, only to find that it's less. This is because they are less. They've given up most of who they are in order to be - and to stay - in their relationship. You must first see yourself as worthy before you can see another as worthy. You must first know yourself to be holy before you can acknowledge holiness in another. If you put the cart before the horse (and acknowledge another as worthy before you acknowledge yourself) you will one day resent. If there is one thing none of you can tolerate, it is someone being worthy than thou. Yet you are doing it. You suffer, the other in the relationship is not worthy than you, but you made them out to be.

LOVE YOURSELF - the primary process in life is not becoming, but recognizing what already is. Truth - that which never changes - keep truth alive by repeating it constantly.

Free yourself.

I hope you enjoy this and other things I wrote. If one cannot understand, please ask me.

This piece is excerpt from "A conversation with God", An Uncommon Dialogue
(Book 1 - 109-112)
And my syda yoga lessons

Love and respect

Cooper